Transcript of Dan Caldwell on The Tucker Carlson Show

But we would prefer, strongly prefer a diplomatic solution. And he’s being attacked up and down, including by a lot of people in the administration, in private, and really, who were trying to steer him toward military action.

So leaving aside all the internecine fights going on, just as a real life matter, what would happen if the US participated in a military strike on Iran’s nuclear sites?

The Role of Military Options in Diplomacy

DAN CALDWELL: So I strongly believe that for diplomacy to work, there needs to be a credible military option.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

DAN CALDWELL: And the President needs that. The Pentagon, where I used to work, needs to provide that. That is their role in American foreign policy, is to provide that leverage for diplomatic solutions to work. Now, that’s how it’s supposed to work. Does it often work that way? Unfortunately, the last 30 years have shown us that it really doesn’t. But the Trump administration is trying to make it work that way like it’s supposed to.

TUCKER CARLSON: We’re pursuing diplomacy with the leverage of potential military action.

DAN CALDWELL: Correct. That is how it’s supposed to work. Now, there’s risks in that. You could create a security dilemma, a spiral. So you have to be careful. But that is essentially why the DoD exists. Now, with that said, there are obviously specifics I can’t get into. But I think it is fair to say that a war with Iran risks being incredibly costly in terms of lives and dollars and instability in the Middle East.

TUCKER CARLSON: Lives and dollars, American lives, American dollars.

The True Cost of War with Iran

DAN CALDWELL: The lives of Americans, the lives of Iraqis, of Saudis, of Iranians, of Israelis, Emirates, yes, of Israelis and of course Iranians. It could be an incredibly costly war. And I think that that is very obvious to anybody who’s been watching the region for a while. And I think that’s why over the last few years you have seen certain countries in the region change some of their positions on how they want to engage Iran.

There are a lot of Gulf Arab countries, for example, who they by no means view Iran as a benevolent force in the region. They’re very aware of the threats that they could pose, but they also recognize that a war for them would be extremely costly. And so they’re trying to adopt a different posture. And that’s a recognition on their end of the costs that a potential full out war with Iran could have.

And I think the President, Vice President, they know this and that is why they are making sure they’re prioritizing diplomacy. And let me just say, thank God we have Steve Witkoff in the administration. He is truly doing the Lord’s work and trying to stop this war through diplomacy and also end another ongoing war in Russia, Ukraine. And they’re making sure that his effort is the main effort, not a military effort at the moment.

Changing Attitudes in the Gulf States

TUCKER CARLSON: So just for people who haven’t been following this, what you’re alluding to at the Gulf states, there are six of them, but two of the biggest ones, and the closest US Allies would be UAE and Saudi, and those are primarily Sunni states run by Sunnis. And they are hostile to Iran for a bunch of different reasons going back a long way. Iran’s proxy forces in neighboring countries, there’s a lot here, but they’ve been basically enemies of Iran or perceived that way. And so the thought was, well, they would back military action against Iran. But you’re saying all of a sudden you wake up and realize, no, they don’t back it.

DAN CALDWELL: They don’t want a major war in the Middle East right now because of what they’re trying to do with their countries in terms of economic development, because they’re trying to give their people a better life. It’s worth noting that Khalid bin Salman, the Saudi Defense Minister, was in Tehran, I believe, a few days ago, and he’s the brother of Mohammed Bin Salman, the crown prince.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

DAN CALDWELL: And they recognize fully the threat that Iran poses and they take it seriously. But just like the Trump administration, they are prioritizing diplomatic outreach in trying to achieve somewhat of a detente. And that doesn’t mean you disarm and you join hands and the Middle East becomes this happy hippie circle jam band. It means that people recognize it’s in no one’s interest to have a major war in the Middle East.

The Risk of a Major Regional War

TUCKER CARLSON: So the idea that it could become a major war is kind of absent from American news accounts. So the idea is that the United States, probably in partnership with Israel, or vice versa, Israel in partnership with the United States, would take out the, I think six Iranian nuclear sites and that would kind of be the end of it, that it wouldn’t become a major war. I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever read any account that suggests it could become a major war. But you’re saying it could.

DAN CALDWELL: Look, when the minute that the bombs or bullets start flying, you can never say with certainty what exactly is going to happen. But I think that because of the fact that Iran has been put on its back foot and Iran is weakened, they’ve had a lot of failures in the region. I think that actually creates an opportunity for more and better diplomacy. But there’s some who argue that creates an opportunity for more military action.

And again, maybe that’s true, but all indications are, is that any type of strike would likely incite a major war in the Middle East. And again, I won’t get into specifics of what that could entail, but that is a likely outcome of any sustained set of strikes on certain parts of Iran.

Americans at Risk in the Region

TUCKER CARLSON: I saw a graphic the other day that showed the number of US Military installations in that region around the Persian Arabian Gulf. And I don’t know if it was a complete list, but there are a lot, and there’s publicly available information. There are a lot of American service personnel stationed in that region and different places. In some of the places, there aren’t that many. They’re not massive, well defended bases. They seem like small bases, including in Iraq and Syria. But others, I mean, why wouldn’t those people be at risk?

DAN CALDWELL: It’s not even just the service members. It’s diplomats in these large embassies in places like Saudi Arabia, in the UAE, in Kuwait. There are some places where there’s actually family members in the Middle East. So it’s not just service members that are at risk. It is American government employees, primarily diplomatic staff. It’s also a lot of American workers in the region, working in the oil industry, working in the finance industry. There are a lot of Americans that would be at risk, not just service members. And that is, again, that is something that, as you point out very well, is often overlooked in any discussion around military action.

The Homeland Security Risk

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, it’s not even mentioned. It’s not even mentioned. The threat to American lives is not even mentioned. And that’s, of course, not even considering, you know, the potential for terrorism. I mean, 9/11 happened because extremists disagreed with American foreign policy. I mean, they said so again and again and again and again. You’re supposed to ignore that and think they did it because they hated our freedoms. What they did was evil. I’m, of course, not in any way excusing it, but they said why they did it. We disagree with what you’re doing. And they attacked the US homeland and killed 3,000 Americans. So, I mean, there’s got to be a concern, given how many Iranians came into the country under the Biden administration illegally, like, that there are probably agents of the Iranian government here and like, there could be acts of terror here if we did this.

How Past Foreign Policy Mistakes Led to Current Challenges

DAN CALDWELL: I mean, that is a risk with any overseas military operation. I do think this is another reason why we need to take homeland defense and homeland security more seriously. But, yes, that is a real risk.

I will say, backing up to the 9/11 comparison, there was a series of mistakes in both American foreign policy and American security policy that paved the road to 9/11. I mean, the inability of the FBI and CIA to work together, the decision to, through friendly nations, to fund certain groups, to allow the growth of certain forces to fight communism, which at the time was probably the right decision because of the threat the Soviet Union posed. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

And one of the reasons why we’re in the situation we are in the Middle East with Iran is we have to be honest, because of the war in Iraq. Saddam Hussein was a check against Iran in that he forced Iran to devote resources to deterring Iraq that now Iran doesn’t need to put against deterring Iraq conventionally or through their own proxies. Now they’re able to put that money into places like Hezbollah, the Houthis, and also devote more resources to its missile program and potentially its nuclear program as well.

That is, I think, one of the things that you can’t overlook when discussing foreign policy and that not enough people have the conversation about how did we get here. It’s like people don’t want to have a conversation about how we got to where we are in Ukraine. You know, NATO expansion played a big role in that. You know, 30 years of failed American foreign policy towards Eastern Europe. The support of certain revolutions, the support of certain political figures.

There were smart people from George Kennan to, you know, even the former CIA director, whatever you think of him, Bill Burns, who warned that this stuff would happen. And again, these decisions that we make in a certain moment, very focused on one thing, have second and third order consequences that sometimes are very easy to see, that they’re quite obvious. Like if anybody had any understanding of the region and the power dynamics in the region in 2003, they would have known. Geez. Removing Saddam Hussein, however awful he was, would inevitably benefit Iran. There was hardly any discussion of that in the lead up to the—

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, no, I was present in the country when all of that happened and I didn’t know anything, but it just seemed obvious. If you have a majority Shiite country and you force democracy, whatever that is, on that country and all of a sudden you get a Shiite government, it’s probably going to be aligned with Iran. Right. It went from a bulwark against Iran to an ally of Iran, which it remains, I think it is effectively.

DAN CALDWELL: The Iraqi government is effectively an Iranian proxy.

TUCKER CARLSON: Okay, so why would you do that? I don’t. I mean, was it this. We’re getting far afield, but it’s directly relevant to what’s happening right now. Yeah, even I, as like a 35 year old journalist could see that this was going to have this effect. Why were the geniuses in charge of our policy not thinking that? Or maybe they were. Maybe there was some larger boy that.

Iran’s Military Capabilities

DAN CALDWELL: Could be a three-hour conversation in and of itself. I think there’s a lot of reasons why we invaded Iraq, none of them good. But the one thing that should be acknowledged is that even before 9/11 there was an effort to create the conditions for the United States to go and invade Iraq. They thought that by overthrowing Saddam, this would lead to an outbreak of peace and democracy across the Middle East that predated 9/11.

You had things like the Project for New American Century, you had Paul Wolfowitz at the tail end of the Bush administration, very angry that George H.W. Bush didn’t go all the way to Baghdad. And then you had this post-Cold War moment where the United States was not simply a superpower, it was a hyper power and we had nobody who could effectively challenge us.

Russia was a mess. China was still on the upswing, some people could see what was coming, but the assumption was, we bring them into the WTO, we do free trade, China’s going to become a democracy. And so when you have nobody in the world that can effectively challenge or check you, that can create political conditions domestically that lead people to think that there will be no consequences for American foreign policy.

I also think that our experience in the Balkans and how those wars went convinced a large part of the American security establishment that we could deal with Iraq rather cheaply and quickly and it would be no big deal. You saw a lot of that in the early days of the Iraq war. People gloating, people assuming that once the statue of Saddam in Firdos Square fell down, which, by the way, was pulled down by Marines from 1st Marine Division, that we’d be out there pretty quickly. And history showed that that was not the case.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, it certainly wasn’t. Well, whatever the motive, the actions of the US Government under George W. Bush greatly strengthened Iran. Removed the main sort of bulwark against their expansion and freed up a lot of cash, as you just said. So here we are. We’re facing enormous pressure to go to war with a country that’s not Iraq, that’s actually more powerful than Iraq. A lot of this is public information, but to the extent I know you’re doing your best not to reveal anything that’s classified, but to the extent you can kind of characterize it using publicly available information. What is the current strength of Iran, do you think, as a military power?

DAN CALDWELL: Again, they’re quite clearly on their back foot. Anybody who’s been watching what has happened to them in the region the last seven, eight months can see that. Yes, Hezbollah has suffered significant defeats. Iran lost arguably its closest ally in the region in Bashar Al-Assad, lost a key pipeline of weapons and supplies into Lebanon, which restricts their ability to help Hezbollah rebuild itself.

They suffered some setbacks from some initial Israeli airstrikes at the end of last year. And I just want to be clear about those airstrikes – they were very limited and they were very targeted. And the Iranian response was effectively telegraphed. And again, I don’t have any information if this is the case, but it appears the Israelis knew it was coming. They were prepared. They had American support to help repel it.

TUCKER CARLSON: It was symbolic, it looked like to me.

DAN CALDWELL: Yes, that’s what it appears. So again, though, we can’t deny that they have suffered some significant setbacks. However, they still retain significant conventional military capabilities, an effective missile force, they have effective proxies in Iraq, they have a very effective drone program.

I think the Iranian missile force more than even a potential nuclear program is their ultimate guarantor of regime and national survival. And again, that goes back to their experience in the Iran-Iraq war when Saddam Hussein, sometimes with indirect or direct American support, would use his Scud missiles and Tupolev bombers to effectively bomb and attack Iranian cities. And the Iranians didn’t have really an effective defense against them or even an effective way to counter-strike Iraq.

They were able to get some Scud missiles from Libya and other sources. It’s an interesting story. Gaddafi and Saddam had this kind of rivalry, so Libya, even though being an Arab, secular, Arab socialist state, kind of like Iraq, they wound up backing Iran, but they were never able to match Iraq’s long-range strike capabilities. And so that is a big reason why they have invested so heavily in developing missiles, drones, cruise missiles and things like that that can strike all across the region. And that is really the real threat.

The Real Iranian Threat

TUCKER CARLSON: Iranian conventional weapons, missiles, correct?

DAN CALDWELL: As of right now, yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right. So when we hear that they’re weakened, we’re talking about their air defenses mostly.

DAN CALDWELL: I won’t necessarily get into that. But part of their conventional capabilities have been weakened but not defeated and they still retain significant capabilities.

TUCKER CARLSON: It sounds to me like people who thought a lot about this have reached the conclusion that if we were to participate in a strike on their nuclear facilities, lots of Americans would die.

DAN CALDWELL: There is real potential to that. Again, you know, there’s a saying in the military that no plan survives the first contact. And it’s largely too that no assumptions survive the first contact. But it’s still a significant risk that that could happen. And I think it’s fair to say that that is weighing in the calculus of a lot of people in the administration.

TUCKER CARLSON: So the choke point for a lot of the global oil trade is the very end, the terminus of the entrance to the Arabian Gulf, Persian Gulf, the Straits of Hormuz, famously. And do you think Iran is capable of shutting that off?

DAN CALDWELL: I think that is a real risk, if not significantly curtailing the ability to ship energy through that vital sea lane.

TUCKER CARLSON: What happens to global oil prices?

DAN CALDWELL: They catastrophically spike. Now, over time, the oil market may well sort itself out for sure. You’ll have more production here domestically and elsewhere. Oil is fungible, but initially it would have a pretty catastrophic impact on global oil markets at a time where the United States is facing some economic headwinds.

The Global Coalition Against the US

TUCKER CARLSON: So you could see catastrophe both in the form of a global depression potentially and the deaths of a lot of Americans in that region and here in the wake of a war with Iran. The third point that I don’t think is ever mentioned in any account I’ve ever read about these plans to just bomb Iran and rid them of their nuclear program is the fact that Iran is now part of a global coalition of big countries that oppose us.

DAN CALDWELL: Now, see, this is very interesting, Tucker. Why are they part of that coalition? And it’s because of our own stupidity we force these countries together that don’t naturally have aligned interests. Iran is a Shiite theocracy. Russia is an authoritarian country run by Vladimir Putin and a group of oligarchs. China is a quasi-communist quasi-state capitalist state. North Korea is one of the last true communist authoritarian countries on the face of the earth.

A lot of these countries should have natural tension. And there’s been points in the post-Cold War era where a country like Russia was willing to do things like not sell weapons to Iran because they didn’t want to inflict instability on the Middle East. Russia also, traditionally, despite the fact they’ve supported some of Israel’s adversaries, did have a good relationship with Israel.

So Israelis, along with the United States, were able to convince the Russians at key points like, “Hey, don’t sell these weapons to Iran,” or “Don’t do this.” And so while they were growing closer, there were still gaps between them. And let’s also be honest too, Russia has had significant problems with Islamic radicalism in their country. And they don’t want to support a regime that in the past has supported Islamic radicals, both Sunni and Shia, across the Middle East and across other parts of the world.

Why are they pushed together? Well, it’s because we adopted this mindset of autocracy versus democracy. And again, it wasn’t well defined before that, but we started just bucketing these countries together. Here’s a great example: Axis of Evil. When they said we have this axis of evil of Iran, Iraq and North Korea, we just talked about it. Iran and Iraq hated each other. They were natural enemies. And by the way, North Korea, what…

TUCKER CARLSON: Does North Korea have to do?

DAN CALDWELL: Here’s an interesting thing. Iran, Iraq and North Korea broke off relationships in the Iran-Iraq war because they were so close to the Iranians. And the North Koreans, it appears, may have ripped off the Iraqis in the 90s. This hasn’t been confirmed, but they may have ripped them off when the North Koreans offered to sell them weapons. And the North Koreans are actually kind of famous for this. They got the money and said, “Yeah, we can’t give that to you.”

They actually tried at one point in the early 90s – again, I can’t say if this story is for sure, but I read this on a military blog – they tried to pay for some Russian military equipment with used car parts.

Russia and China, these are two countries with historical antagonisms. They have a shared border that during the Soviet times, they fought wars over. The Chinese look at Siberia and its resources as their own. Its population, I don’t think is growing right now because they killed 100 million baby girls. But this is an area with resources that they need and that there’s been conflicts over in the past.

There should be tension between those two countries. But our foreign policy of bucketing them all together, sanctioning them, treating them as one united front, has kind of willed…

TUCKER CARLSON: It into existence, has made them one united front.

DAN CALDWELL: Yes. And it shouldn’t be that way. We should be able to pull them apart because they have interests that don’t align. We should be able to be working more with the Russians. And I hope that if Steve Witkoff is successful and others in the administration – there’s a lot of great people in the administration working on Russia, Ukraine right now – if they’re successful, we can hopefully maybe get to a better place with Russia and they can help us with Iran.

Incompetence or Malice?

TUCKER CARLSON: Let me just ask you to pause. Everything you’re saying is, by the way, in the public sphere. You’re not guessing about any of this. It’s obvious. No honest person would deny it. And it’s so crazy, these policies, that it’s almost like they were formulated by people who are trying to tank the United States. I mean, these are policies that are hostile to American interests, not indifferent.

DAN CALDWELL: You know, I think maybe that’s a possibility. But the more I’ve interacted with some of these people and seen them up close, it’s almost given them too much credit.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, never attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by stupidity. Is that what you’re saying?

DAN CALDWELL: There’s definitely evil forces at play, but a lot of this is stupidity and laziness. In my, albeit short time in the Pentagon, like with Ukraine, a lot of people in the Pentagon wanted to keep doing what we were doing in Ukraine. Some of them really had an ideological commitment to the Ukrainian project. I think a lot of the officers…

TUCKER CARLSON: A more transgender Eastern Europe.

DAN CALDWELL: You know, Zelensky as a savior of global liberalism.

TUCKER CARLSON: The war against Christianity. They’re all in. Yeah.

The Pentagon’s Perspective on Ukraine

DAN CALDWELL: So I think that because of their experience, in some ways you can somewhat sympathize with it, is that they did sympathize with Ukraine. But I saw a lot of it, and a lot of it was it’s easier to say we should keep doing what we’re doing than admit that we had been screwing things up and think of a different way to do things. I think that more than ideology, and ideology plays an important role. The belief the American needs to be the global hegemon to enforce liberal hegemony. But really for a lot of the people, and I think the same applies to State Department. It’s just easier to say no.

TUCKER CARLSON: I believe that. I spent a lot of time around the bureaucracy. I think that’s right. It’s just like there’s a physics principle. Objects in motion tend to stay that way. So I completely believe that. But big picture, just like swooping out a little bit. Another Middle Eastern war. Like, I think the overwhelming majority of Americans and certainly the overwhelming majority of Trump voters, like, wait a second. No. So, and in fact, the president was elected to some large extent on the promise to not get us involved in another forever war. So I just have really been struck, but you’re the expert, by how much pressure is applied to the administration to do this, to get us involved in another war in the Middle East. Did you feel that?

The Push for War with Iran

DAN CALDWELL: I think there clearly is a very strong coalition within the United States that wants us to see another war in the Middle East. And it crosses both parties just to point something out. And I wrote about this in Foreign Affairs with a friend of mine, Reed Smith.

During the campaign, the Democrats attacked Trump for being too dovish on Iran. And they attacked him for not doing more after killing Soleimani, not doing more after some of the Iranian drone strikes on Saudi Arabia in 2019. They accused him of being too weak on Iran. And the Democrat Party trotted out Liz Cheney, of all people, and the endorsement of her father had her going to battleground states, talking about the importance of staying, quote, strong in the Middle East and continuing to fund an unwinnable war in Ukraine. And that was the position they adopted.

So it’s kind of transcended the traditional right-left way we think about American foreign policy that came into being at the end of the Cold War and or even before that. It really predates the end of Cold War. It really goes back to the Cold War where the, in the post-Vietnam era especially the Democrats were the doves, Republicans were the hawks. It really kind of transcends that. And you have this trans-partisan movement to keep America engaged in the world. And I think it’s good for America to be engaged in the world, but engaged in the world so that their primary purpose is not to protect American interests or safety or the conditions of American prosperity, but to ensure that America is enforcing liberal hegemony.

So getting back to Iran, there’s a lot of reasons why people want war with Iran. I think when it comes down to it is a lot of people still think you can do regime change wars successfully in the Middle East.

TUCKER CARLSON: Regime change wars. I thought this was all about getting rid of the, whatever, half dozen Iranian nuclear sites because we don’t want Iran to have a nuclear weapon.

The Real Agenda: Regime Change

DAN CALDWELL: Well, I think Donald Trump has exposed them because they’re essentially, I mean, some of the biggest advocates of war with Iran, whether it’s groups like Foundation for Defense and Democracy, writers at certain publications. Essentially they are saying the problem with diplomacy is it doesn’t lead to regime change, is that the policy should be regime change. It’s almost like the nuclear issue is really about creating a pathway to regime change. And it really still goes back to this idea is a lot of them deep down inside believe, and some of them say it out loud, that we could have made Iraq successful. And Iraq is just a mess. It is an absolute, just cluster.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, it’s a proxy of Iran.

DAN CALDWELL: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: The country they hate.

DAN CALDWELL: Let me just make a note on this. The most deadly forces in the Middle East. The forces that pose the most risk to the United States forces are the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq. They are an official arm of the Iraqi government that we created after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, which we fund through aid and whose troops that we train still with a couple thousand troops in Iraq.

So American troops in Iraq right now are getting attacked by people who are part of the same government that American troops are helping to support and whose security forces are helping to train. It is the most counterproductive and insane foreign policy mission in the globe right now. And I hope the administration will make changes to that. But that’s how it is.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, in the last, I don’t know, 22 years, 24 years, I guess, since 9/11. Amazing. Our record with regime change in the Middle East has been like 100% failure.

DAN CALDWELL: Yeah. And if you go to Libya, you go to Syria.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, but failure on every level.

DAN CALDWELL: It hasn’t even Yemen. You can include Yemen because we backed the old government before it collapsed and Yemen devolved in a civil war.

The Disastrous Track Record of Regime Change

TUCKER CARLSON: It hasn’t made the United States safer or richer. It hasn’t, by the way, I would argue, made our allies safer either, however much they may have wanted it. It hasn’t been good for them either, that I can see. And it’s been a disaster for millions of people, human beings in those countries. But mostly it hasn’t helped the United States. So how could you, with a straight face, advocate for yet another regime change war against a real country that’s not Libya, not Iraq, it’s Iran, it’s the Persian Empire. Like, how could you say that out loud. Are they actually saying that out loud?

DAN CALDWELL: Yeah. I mean, some of them do say it out loud. Yes. Is that they think, oh, the Shah’s son has re-emerged. I mean, this guy is the, he’s the ultimate fail son in my view. And then you have groups like the MEK People’s Mujahideen of Iran who pay a lot of American politicians to advocate for them and advocate for regime change. They are essentially saying, hey, we have governments in waiting that can just swoop in there and everything will be fine if you just get rid of the mullahs. Where have we heard that before?

TUCKER CARLSON: You know, it’s hard to believe this is actually real.

DAN CALDWELL: I know it is.

TUCKER CARLSON: It is hard to believe, ignoring the most obvious facts of the last 30 years.

DAN CALDWELL: It goes back to what I was saying about what I observed in the Pentagon. I think is that it’s easier to advocate for the same things over and over again than to say we should do something different.

Congressional Pressure for War

TUCKER CARLSON: What do you make of the senator? I mean, maybe you have a different experience, but I just hear constantly about Republican senators. I’m sure there are Democrats too, but I hear about the Republicans, Lindsey Graham being the most obvious, but many others constantly applying pressure to the administration to have a regime change war against Iran. I’m not going to confirm your nominees. We’re going to hassle, I mean, like threatening, threatening the Trump administration in order to force them to lead a regime change war against Iran. What could possibly be their motive? What is that.

DAN CALDWELL: Look there? I think, and I’ve talked about this before in my past jobs, I think there’s a disconnect in Washington, D.C. among elected Republicans, with the exception of those in the White House currently, between the base, which what the base actually believes on foreign policy. And so the base very much doesn’t want new wars like the voters.

TUCKER CARLSON: You’re talking about people who put them there.

The Disconnect Between Voters and Politicians

DAN CALDWELL: And time and time again, you saw the majority of Republican voters in a lot of these primaries saying that they wanted fewer wars. Republicans in a lot of cases were now less hawkish overall. And, you know, polling, it doesn’t tell the whole story all the time, but you saw voters generally, the Democrats are getting more hawkish, primarily because of Ukraine, but you saw Republican voters and independent voters becoming more and more wary of foreign wars.

However, because foreign policy for a lot of voters is often not a highly salient issue. It’s not in their top three. A lot of Republicans and Democrats are able to get elected despite having horrible records on foreign policy. Now there are elections where it makes a difference. 2016, for example, there’s real evidence that the fact that Donald Trump was viewed as less hawkish than Hillary Clinton played a decisive role in him winning Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the counties that flipped from Obama to Trump, they had higher levels of what you call military sacrifice, so troops deployed, wounded or killed than some of their adjacent counties. So that likely contributed both to his 2016 and possibly his 2024 victory.

Now, I have good dear friends of mine that from a, you know, they’re much smarter than me on polling and social science, they may disagree with that. But there have been times where actually the political incentives are to be less hawkish, but those don’t show up in most elections. So you have a lot of Republican leaders in particular that are just disconnected from the base.

Now I think the good news is, though, is you’re starting to see that change and you saw that play out with Ukraine aid, where I think the last major Ukraine aid vote, and it may actually be the last major Ukraine aid vote yet ever. I think you had over half of Senate Republicans vote against it and more than half of Senate, or, excuse me, House members vote against it. And that went from like you only had six Republicans voting against the first big Ukraine aid package in 2022 and only 40 House Republicans to now believe about 26, 27 senators and then nearly 110, 113, somewhere in that range, House Republicans voting against it. So you’ve seen changes and definitely the Republicans elected since 2018 in both the House and Senate, they’re far less hawkish than people elected before them. That’s indisputable.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, it hasn’t worked. It hasn’t worked. And I don’t think anyone who puts the interest of the United States first really does in his heart could come around to another regime change, war in Iran. Like, that’s almost prima facie evidence that you are not putting your country’s interests first. That’s the way it feels to me. Maybe I’m being uncharitable.

America First Foreign Policy

DAN CALDWELL: No. And I think this goes back to a simple belief of what is the purpose of American foreign policy. I believe, and I think President Trump, Vice President Vance, I believe even Secretary Rubio, Secretary Hagseff and others in the administration fundamentally believe the purpose of American foreign policy is to ensure American safety and the conditions of our prosperity.

That doesn’t mean we’re going to ensure 3% GDP growth. It’s the things that enable us to be prosperous. So like, for example, prioritizing the defense of The Panama Canal over the negligible issue of which Eastern European oligarch gets to loot the Donbas like they believe. They believe that, you know, that is more important because the Panama Canal, indisputably is more important to us than who controls the Donbas or who controls some desolate patch of desert in the Middle East.

TUCKER CARLSON: So, nicely put. Well, Easter is finally here, and there’s no better way to remember the story of Christ Jesus. Dying for your sins is the most powerful thing that’s ever happened in history. It is really the beginning of history and it’s worth celebrating this. Easter embraced the freedom of the resurrection on Hallow, which is the number one prayer app in the world. Join Liz Tabish, who plays Mary Magdalene in the Chosen actor, Kevin James and others in an immersive and jubilant prayer experience worthy of Easter itself. Every single day you learn how to walk in freedom amidst the circumstances, often crushing of your daily life and let go of the things that you’re attached to and that are causing suffering. And instead embrace the peace and freedom that come when you place your trust in God, which is the only place to place your trust. So enter the joy of Easter with a brief prayer, reflection, meditation every single day that will help you continue the habits that will change everything, the ones you establish during Lent. We love Hallow here. We love the app. We know you will, too. It’s got thousands of prayers, meditations, music, help you build a daily habit of prayer and to grow closer to God. Download hallow today at hallow.com/Tucker. You get three months for free. You, you’ll be grateful you did honestly. You will be. How did you get involved in all of this? What’s your story? And can I say I should have asked at the essay. What was your. You just left the Pentagon under circumstances I hope we can talk about. What were you doing when you left?

Dan Caldwell’s Role at the Pentagon

DAN CALDWELL: So I was a senior advisor to the Secretary of Defense. I was focused on policy. I was the senior advisor in the front office for policy. And so my job day to day was advising the secretary on policy, making sure that he was prepared for meetings, making sure that he was prepared for giving certain speeches and talks, and then providing him policy advice as needed.

We had a very smart policy team. The undersecretary of Defense for policy who just was confirmed. Thank God. Bridge Colby, he’s doing a great job. Where the Pentagon works is you need somebody in the front office that can connect the secretary effectively to policy. And policy has so many jobs and so many things they have to focus on that you need somebody in the front office that can help, be that immediate policy advisor that is able to walk in and talk to the secretary right away.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right. Okay. Is that the job that you dreamed about as a child? Like, how did you wind up here?

Early Life and Military Service

DAN CALDWELL: You know, it’s funny, there was a part of me that didn’t even want to go to the Pentagon. Wasn’t necessarily something that I dreamed of. I mean, I think my first job I was really obsessed with, like a lot of young boys is being a firefighter.

TUCKER CARLSON: Where’d you grow up?

DAN CALDWELL: I grew up. I was born in California, lived in Massachusetts for a while, but home is Scottsdale, Arizona. That’s where I consider home. My kids were born there. My parents still live there. My grandma still lives there. I still have a lot of family there, and that will always be home for me.

TUCKER CARLSON: So how did you… You were in the military?

DAN CALDWELL: Yes, the Marine Corps.

TUCKER CARLSON: You were in the Marine Corps? How did that… How did you wind up in the Marine Corps?

DAN CALDWELL: So I went to a Jesuit all boys school. And the last two years are very intense. The expectation was everybody’s going to go to college. And by the end of my time in high school, I didn’t want to do more academics. I didn’t want to go to college, but it was the thing you had to do.

So I dragged myself down to Tucson to go to the University of Arizona. And candidly, I was miserable. I didn’t have any motivation to go to class or do stuff, and I just was hating life. And then one day, my best friend, a dear friend, I love him to death, James O’Connor. He was from high school. He had dropped out of Arizona State University and enlisted in the army as a paratrooper like his dad and was attached to 101st as part of the Pathfinder unit.

He went to Iraq in the fall of 2005. And I remember him on AOL Instant Messenger sending me a message saying, “My team almost got hit by an IED.” And I was kind of like, what am I doing here? I need to get in the fight. Because growing up, I was very interested in military history. And my grandfather, who is very important to me, he was a paratrooper. But I became obsessed with the Marine Corps. And he had me read two books. The Nightingale Song about…

TUCKER CARLSON: Amazing book.

DAN CALDWELL: It’s an amazing book. I still go and read it every couple years, honestly.

TUCKER CARLSON: And he released… I think he’s passed away now as a Baltimore Sun reporter, but he released a longer version, kind of unexpurgated version, which is amazing.

DAN CALDWELL: And then he had me read Fields of Fire by Jim Webb.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, my gosh.

DAN CALDWELL: And Jim Webb is one of my personal…

TUCKER CARLSON: Those are both Vietnam books.

DAN CALDWELL: Yeah. And so they had an unvarnished view of the Marine Corps, but I still wanted to be part of that. So I get the message from James, and I say, I gotta get out of here. Dropped out. Told my parents, who were apoplectic, they weren’t impressed.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. They were scared.

DAN CALDWELL: And I still feel bad about that fear I put in them because I went and I enlisted in the infantry.

TUCKER CARLSON: You enlisted?

DAN CALDWELL: Yes, as an 0311 in the Marine Corps. Now, my first two years in the Marine Corps…

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s like the least glamorous thing you can do.

DAN CALDWELL: You know what? For some people. Yes. And I know that you have some Marines that work for you.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. But enlisted Marines.

DAN CALDWELL: Yeah. And all due respect to them, but there was a saying in the infantry. It’s like, “If you ain’t infantry, you ain’t shit.”

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

DAN CALDWELL: And everything the Marine Corps did, from its fighter squadrons to its artillery to its tanks, was in support of the enlisted riflemen, locating with and destroying the enemy and repelling enemy assault by fire, maneuver. And so everything was in support of the 0311 doing its job. And so I love being in infantry. And there was kind of this thing, like, if you were infantry, you felt whether it was true or not, you were cut above the rest. Your life sucked more. But that was a point of pride, and I love that.

TUCKER CARLSON: So you just… Bottom line, you drop out of college and enlist in the Marine Corps during a war.

Military Career and Deployment

DAN CALDWELL: Yes. This was 2005. Things were going just swimmingly in Iraq. Then Afghanistan was kind of on a simmer, but it was still bad before getting much, much worse.

So my first two years in boot camp, I was selected for a program called Yankee White. And this is the Presidential Support Program. So if you’ve ever seen the Marines saluting in front of the White House, they’re part of the Presidential Support program. And as part of that, I went to be part of the Marine Security Force at Camp David. So I spent, I think, almost two years up there while President Bush was president. And that was a great duty station. I loved it. Some of my closest friends still to this day, I served with up there. And it was a great command, I had a great first sergeant, great commanding officer, great platoon sergeant.

So I spent two years there, and then once my time was up there, I went to 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines, which was very lucky. I got put in another great company, Fox Co. 2:1. And we did a workup, and we deployed to Iraq. And this was end of ’08, 2009.

I’ll be honest, it was not as bad as it was in Ramadi and Fallujah a few years before. And it was mostly an uneventful deployment, with some exceptions. There were some incidents and things like that. But you kind of left Iraq at that time thinking, okay, this isn’t going to be like Scottsdale, Arizona, anytime soon. But this could kind of work. This could kind of be like Tijuana, Mexico. But five years later, with the exception of Al Assad, every place that I was at in Iraq was under the control of ISIS.

TUCKER CARLSON: The places you were personally?

DAN CALDWELL: Yes. From the city Hit to South Sinjar, the mountain where those Yazidis were trapped, where there were those massacres, and they enslaved all the women. I was… We were all around Mount Sinjar. We spent a lot of time with Yazidis. Just very interesting people. Their religion is very interesting. They worship what the West, a lot of Westerners would call the devil. I don’t think that’s very accurate. But they were very pro-American. They were always dressed in colorful outfits, and they’d come and wave at us. Whereas when you were in the Sunni parts, they just kind of ignore you, and they’re like, when are you guys going to leave? And so five years after that, all had fallen apart.

TUCKER CARLSON: And a lot of those people who waved at you were dead or sex slaves.

DAN CALDWELL: Yeah. I have a picture of myself on my Twitter with two young Yazidi boys, and they’re either dead or they’re in an ISIS camp. Maybe they were able to go back, but that’s probably the reality of that, unfortunately.

Post-Military Career and Reflections

TUCKER CARLSON: Where were you five years later by the time you saw this?

DAN CALDWELL: I was working at Concerned Veterans for America. That’s where I met Pete Hegseth. And one thing that happened over those five years and continued to happen is I saw… I did two things. I learned a lot about why the war started, learned about the decisions that brought us there, and I didn’t have an overnight transition. It took a while for it to happen, but I saw the impact on my community of veterans and it’s only gotten worse since then.

TUCKER CARLSON: What was the… I’m sure you could talk for hours on it. But if you could sum up the effect of the Iraq war on guys you knew, what would it be?

DAN CALDWELL: So three Marines that I served with, either in 2/1 or Camp David, were killed in action. A half dozen were seriously wounded, including some double amputees. All in Afghanistan. Well, a few in Iraq. As we sit here, about 20 have committed suicide or died as a result of service-related injuries.

TUCKER CARLSON: 20?

DAN CALDWELL: That’s for people who serve in the infantry. That’s very common. There were infantry units who fought in the battle of Fallujah and Ramadi and other very intense conflicts that have suffered more Marines who have killed themselves than were actually killed in action.

Reflections on the Iraq War

TUCKER CARLSON: You really try to navigate this topic without being filled with hate. You don’t want to become a hater, but it’s hard when you hear stuff like that and you think of someone like David Frum, not even an American, screaming at people, calling them bigots for not wanting to engage in another regime change war. I mean, it’s like, it’s hard.

DAN CALDWELL: It’s a disgrace that he is allowed in good and proper company. I think the Iraq war was a monstrous crime. That’s the only way I can describe it. It was a crime first and foremost against the Iraqi people and then the Syrian people, because those two wars are clearly connected.

You know, ISIS essentially was formed in American prisons. Well, ISIS sprung out of Zarqawi’s group, but the leadership like Baghdadi, even the new president of Syria, Jelani, they were in American prisons and they met people that would eventually help form their core leadership teams in Al Nusra, which is the Al Qaeda branch. And then ISIS. Baghdadi met in prison, in American prison, Iraqi military leaders and started to learn more about military tactics. And a lot of those people he was in prison with would be the people that would help him take over most of Iraq and Syria.

TUCKER CARLSON: What did it… You’re not the first person I’ve asked this of, but what did it feel like as someone who actually served there, who wanted to serve, they dropped out of college to enlist, not go into ROTC, but to enlist in the Marine Corps. What did it… You gave your whole life to it. And then to see the carnage, the Americans whose lives were destroyed, and then realize this was all kind of fake. Like, what effect did that have on you?

DAN CALDWELL: It started really pushing me to where I’m at now in foreign policy. We need to do something differently. And it kind of radicalized me in a certain way on this.

And really there’s an argument that you need to be… When you’re talking about foreign policy, you kind of need to be cold and detached. Like some people say that realists need to be cold and detached. I don’t necessarily buy that. But, you know, when I hear about launching a new military operation or somebody talk about something, my first thought is, what’s it going to be like for the guys? What’s going to be like for the boys that are going to be in the front? And men, women too. It just, that’s kind of the, you can’t help but look through it for that prism and sometimes you do have to detach yourself from it. But the big thing is like, we have to stop this from happening again. This cannot happen again.

TUCKER CARLSON: I couldn’t agree with you more and I wish more people would articulate this perspective. I think it’s… So among the guys you serve with in the Marine Corps in Iraq, like, would you say many agree with you?

DAN CALDWELL: Yes, yes. Right, left, most of them are rabidly anti-interventionist. Some of them make me look like Paul Wolfowitz.

TUCKER CARLSON: And you’re talking about the guys who served who carried rifles in Iraq?

DAN CALDWELL: Yes, yeah. And we did at Concerned Veterans for America. We did a lot of polling when I was there, and we consistently found that the veterans and military families population was more opposed to new wars by pretty noticeable margins than the general population as a whole.

The Human Cost of War

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s interesting. So you mentioned death, killed in action, you mentioned injuries, profound injuries, you mentioned suicide, psychological injuries.

DAN CALDWELL: I’m sorry, I didn’t even mention broken families.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, that’s it. That’s what I was about to ask. Keep going.

DAN CALDWELL: I mean, high rates of divorce.

TUCKER CARLSON: High rates of divorce. We were talking before we were on the air. I know a lot of enlisted Marines. My dad was one. I don’t know. I don’t think I know any guys who enlisted the Marine Corps during the war on terror who aren’t divorced. I’m sure there are, but am I imagining this?

DAN CALDWELL: There are some combat arms and special forces communities that have 90% divorce rates.

TUCKER CARLSON: 90%, yes. We undervalue that. Like that is a disaster for the people involved and for their children. Like, that’s a true tragedy. True tragedy. Divorce is a death. And so if you’ve got 90% divorce rates like that, I don’t know why no one pauses to say, how can we not do this to people.

DAN CALDWELL: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Do you agree?

DAN CALDWELL: Yes. Now look, I mean, divorce has always been a problem in the military. You have a lot of guys getting married too young to get out of the barracks. We were talking about that beforehand. But it’s the strain of deployments on these specific units that just spikes divorce rates in certain units. And when you have guys that are spending 70, 80% of their time away from home either training to be deployed or deployed, it’s hard. Military service is always going to be hard. But the increased deployment tempo we’ve had, particularly post 9/11, is exacerbated that.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, that’s the first thing I noticed when I started covering all this stuff or going over there. These guys were doing like a crazy number of deployments. And I just think you’re going to destroy a man over time if you keep sending him to war. No.

DAN CALDWELL: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: How could you not?

DAN CALDWELL: Yes. I think everybody has their breaking point. And there are guys who are able to do. There are people in Ranger units that are on their 15th, 16th deployment, guys who’ve been in for over 20 years.

TUCKER CARLSON: What does that do to you?

DAN CALDWELL: I mean, there’s so many things it can do to you. I mean, there’s some people that are able to just turn it on and off and put it in a box. But I would say that for everybody, just physically, it breaks you down. You know, you got 38-year-old guys that have bodies of 60-year-olds. Just mentally, it just can wear you down as well too.

The Toll of War on Veterans

TUCKER CARLSON: I’ve argued with Dan Crenshaw in public a lot and made fun of him a lot. And I mean this with true sincerity. I look at that guy and I’m like, you were damaged by war. I’m sorry. I mean, I don’t know Dan Crenshaw, but I do know a lot of people who have been damaged by their experience, like really damaged by their experience.

DAN CALDWELL: You know, I’d say that he’s kind of an outlier too in the community where he still, for whatever reason, is supporting American primacy and the status quo. And increasingly, most of his fellow veterans in the Republican side are actually rejecting that.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, they hate him. And I understand, certainly understand why, but he’s unbalanced like that guy. It’s not that we have like a disagreement over policies like that guy. There’s something really wrong with him. And maybe I’m being too generous, but I just have to suspect, knowing a lot of guys like that.

DAN CALDWELL: I can understand why you said that. I mean, he did threaten to kill you, right?

TUCKER CARLSON: He threatened to kill me. But I’m not worried about that. I just, like, I’m trying to be Christian and generous about this. Like, he’s a very damaged person, and perhaps he always was, but I know a bunch of damaged people who went through those experiences. I mean, you must also.

DAN CALDWELL: It’s been devastating on our community. It really has. And there’s some people that say, oh, the word damage, like, they try to soften it. Oh, you shouldn’t use the word damage. That’s the proper way to describe it.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’m saying that with love and compassion and gratitude for everything they’ve done for us and for their patriotism and decency. And I’m not saying that as a criticism. I’m saying that as you would about someone you care about and you hate to see them hurt. I mean.

DAN CALDWELL: Yeah. Yeah, I agree.

Life After Service

TUCKER CARLSON: So you get out of the Marine Corps. What do you do?

DAN CALDWELL: So I finish up college. I didn’t really want to go to college, but I blew through in like two, two and a half years. I worked for a member of Congress for a couple years.

TUCKER CARLSON: How were you feeling when you got out of there? Did it have lasting effects on you?

DAN CALDWELL: You know, my first few months out of the Marine Corps were tough. There was some stuff in my personal life that was happening. My father—this is when the economy was really bad—my father passed away from drug overdose. And then leaving the Marine Corps, leaving a group of guys you had thought were your brothers, and living in an apartment by yourself—that was not a fun time.

I thought it was going to be a blast. You know, I have a bunch of money saved up from deployment. I’m going to go on the GI Bill. I’m going to a party school. And I just eventually just said, hey, I’m just gonna get through college. I want to get a job. I got married, and so I just blew through college.

And then I got a job working for a member of Congress out in Arizona. And I was primarily focused on veterans constituent work at first, and that was actually fulfilling, helping veterans get benefits. And I learned a lot about how dysfunctional the VA was and how dysfunctional Department of Defense was, too, because I was helping guys with problems with the DoD.

After two and a half years there, just to be candid, I needed to make more money. By that time, I had a child. And so a friend of mine introduced me to Concerned Veterans for America, which at the time was run by Pete Hegseth, and I was recruited there first as somebody doing some field work, and then eventually as legislative and one of the policy directors.

TUCKER CARLSON: How long were you there?

DAN CALDWELL: I was affiliated with Concerned Veterans for America in one capacity or another for, gosh, almost nine years.

TUCKER CARLSON: Wow.

DAN CALDWELL: I was eventually the executive director, and then even when I moved to a new job, I retained a senior advisor role.

TUCKER CARLSON: Huh. And were you close to Pete the whole time?

DAN CALDWELL: When he was with Concerned Veterans for America? Yes, we worked very closely together, along with Darin Selnick, who’s another individual that left the position Pentagon last week. And I was primarily working with him on policy and comms, mainly focused on our efforts to fix the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Transition to the Trump Administration

TUCKER CARLSON: So fast forward to the 2024 campaign. Trump wins in November, and there’s a mad scramble to staff the administration. What role did you play in that?

DAN CALDWELL: So early on, even before the election, it was very informal because President Trump didn’t initially do a formal transition that you’d seen before, which, actually, I think in some ways was a good idea at the time. I maybe didn’t understand why, but because of all the leaks and stuff that had hurt him in the first campaign, it ultimately became a much better run transition. And I think a lot of the credit goes to, of course, the President himself, but Susie Wiles and I think Sergio Gore as well, who was heading personnel.

So I was working with a group of people early on to identify people that could serve in the Department of Defense. And one day I get a call from someone and was told, “Hey, what do you know about Pete Hegseth?” I give a few bullets about what I know about him, and then I call Pete. We had still stayed in touch, but we weren’t working as closely together as we had before. I said, “Hey, just so you know, the transition was asking questions about you.” And he says, “Yeah, I know I’m being considered for the role of Secretary of Defense.” I was like, “Wow, okay, that’s cool.”

So a few days later, through Veterans Day weekend, he gets the job. And I started working with him during his confirmation. I helped him defend against a lot of the attacks that were made against him, help with strategy. But what I eventually took over was being his main link to the personnel operation, so helping to vet and place personnel within the Department of Defense. And so I’d fly down to Florida a lot and work with some really great people on the PPO team in doing that.

TUCKER CARLSON: So you’re not working for the government at this point?

DAN CALDWELL: No, I’m doing this on a volunteer basis and I was paying for these flights out of my own pocket.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really. Did you get reimbursed?

DAN CALDWELL: As of now, no.

TUCKER CARLSON: So you’re paying your way down to help Pete Hegseth. You’re obviously strongly in favor of Pete Hegseth. Are you doing that?

DAN CALDWELL: Yeah, I was very strongly supportive of him becoming Secretary of Defense.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. Yes, I know him. I know him obviously very well. I work with him. He’s such a good guy.

DAN CALDWELL: And I would just say, you know, there’s a lot of stories eventually written about me and the personnel, that I was the puppet master and that I had ultimate decision rights and that I was trying to block people that supported this or that or opposed this and that. It was all nonsense. I mean, let me tell you again, there were people on the PPO team that were much more hardcore on foreign policy than I was. And so in a lot of cases, I didn’t even need to block unaligned people. They’re already getting blocked by people earlier in the process.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I must say, I don’t think a fair listener could accuse you of being radical in any sense. You seem totally mainstream to me. Nothing you’ve said seems ideological or crazy or fringe or anything like that. You served in the Marine Corps during a war. You didn’t think that our policy was serving the country or the people who defend it. And you’re just trying to keep that foremost in mind as you help create policy for the next generation.

DAN CALDWELL: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: Is that a fair…

Dan Caldwell’s Experience in the Trump Administration

DAN CALDWELL: I think that’s totally fair. And I just would point out that one thing that was amazing about working on the transition – it was tough sometimes, frustrating sometimes – and then in the administration was, there are so many good people in this administration.

I remember I worked a lot with the first Trump administration. And you can see me on the Internet. I was standing behind the President when he was signing veterans bills all the time. The President tweeted about one of my media appearances once. I remember where I would have people from the White House and from the VA trying to talk me and Concerned Veterans for America out of supporting something the President wanted, particularly VA choice – giving choice to veterans or making it easier to fire bad VA employees. These are political appointees saying, “Why do you want to do that? That’s too radical. You know, just, we need to fix this or that on the margin.”

And this time around, you have, I think, just like any administration, there are people that aren’t on board with the President. But one of the coolest things I would just say working in administration was having friends and people that share your mindset across the interagency.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

DAN CALDWELL: And being able to call them up and bounce ideas off each other. And that was a really good experience, I will say. And you saw that transition too.

Concerns About Foreign Policy Direction

TUCKER CARLSON: Well. And you feel it. You feel it. And I’m not involved at all. I’m just watching. But it seems like the fastest way to derail the whole project – the Trump administration and the United States of America – is a war with Iran. And that’s why I’ve just been watching it as carefully as I can because I feel like, again, if you hated Donald Trump and you hated what the administration is doing on immigration, trade, anti-wokeness, whatever, and you wanted to stop it, the first thing you would do is apply pressure to have the US Military engage in a war with Iran. I mean, that’s my perspective on it, anyway.

DAN CALDWELL: I think that. And also continuing to do what we’ve been doing previously in Russia, Ukraine, for sure.

TUCKER CARLSON: For sure. Though I don’t know why. Well, I’m going to ask you all about this, but it feels like Wyckoff is helping a lot there. God bless.

DAN CALDWELL: I mean, I’ve already said he’s a godsend.

TUCKER CARLSON: God bless Steve Wyckoff. I couldn’t agree more. As a man and as an instrument of peace and a figure now out of history.

Okay, so you did make, just from an outsider’s perspective, one maybe career mistake by giving on the record interviews before you went in, describing your foreign policy views, which I think are fully within the mainstream of the world in the US but out of the mainstream among, you know, warmongers in Washington. So, like, people knew that you weren’t fully on board with the regime change program. Is that fair to say?

DAN CALDWELL: Yeah, I was very open about it. I was very on the record about it. And most of the time when I was saying that we shouldn’t do this, it was actually in support of, you know, the president’s stated preferences. Like, the president clearly doesn’t want this in the first term. There were people in his administration that wanted it. He clearly didn’t want it. And so it was supporting people who didn’t want the war.

TUCKER CARLSON: But Donald Trump has said – and now his actions make perfectly clear – he would strongly prefer a diplomatic solution. Correct.

DAN CALDWELL: I don’t want to speak for the president, but it’s fairly obvious that that’s what he wants.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, he said it. I mean, he said it again and he ran on it, so it’s not a crazy position. And now things are getting so bonkers in this country that saying that makes you a bigot or something, a Nazi. It’s like, I’m just going to ignore all that, and I just want to get back to your experience.

So I’m just watching this from the outside, and I’m thinking, having spent my life in D.C., I was like, Dan Caldwell’s got a target on his back. I don’t know if he knows that.

DAN CALDWELL: Yeah.

Allegations of Leaking Classified Information

TUCKER CARLSON: And then I read all of a sudden that you’re a traitor. You’re, like, marched out of the Pentagon for leaking. For leaking. Right. And then the whispering campaign, the character assassination campaign begins, and here’s its outline. I don’t want to upset you. May not even be aware of this. Dan Caldwell leaked classified information to liberal media outlets, to the media, to NBC News, for example. So I just want to be totally direct with you. Did you leak classified information against the wishes of your superiors to media outlets?

DAN CALDWELL: Absolutely not.

TUCKER CARLSON: Did you photograph classified material and then text pictures of that material to an NBC News reporter?

DAN CALDWELL: Absolutely not. And I have not spoken to an NBC reporter while at the Pentagon.

TUCKER CARLSON: Are you… Do you know what you’ve been accused of?

DAN CALDWELL: No, I don’t. Sitting here right now, myself and Darin Selnick and Colin Carroll, the other two individuals that were escorted out of the Pentagon, initially placed on leave and then fired on Friday – we have not been told as of this recording: One, what we were being investigated for. Two, is there still an investigation? And three, was there even a real investigation? Because there’s a lot of evidence that there is not a real investigation. But again, sitting here right now, there are a lot of unknowns about this. As a former Secretary of Defense would say, there’s a lot of unknown unknowns. There are some things that are pretty clear, but we have no idea what specifically we’re investigated for.

TUCKER CARLSON: We can know some things just by the details. So here are a couple. Have you been polygraphed?

DAN CALDWELL: No, I’ve never been hooked up to polygraph machine since I’ve been in Department of Defense.

TUCKER CARLSON: Okay. Have you given up your private communications devices? Your private phone?

DAN CALDWELL: No.

TUCKER CARLSON: To anybody?

DAN CALDWELL: No.

TUCKER CARLSON: Okay, so that raises the obvious question. I’m trying not to use the F word here because the lying is just driving me insane. You’re being accused of leaking classified information, but the people accusing you would have no way of knowing whether you did that or not because they haven’t polygraphed you or taken your devices. Your private devices. Correct.

DAN CALDWELL: I mean, there are…

TUCKER CARLSON: You can’t even make the allegation because…

DAN CALDWELL: There’s no conceivable way. There are so many different things that would prevent me from doing the things that you’ve laid out. And again, I don’t even know if that’s what I’m really being investigated for, if there’s a real investigation.

But the point is, what I have told some people who have asked me about what’s going on is I would repeat something that I heard in the Marine Corps in our work up to Iraq. I believe it was in something called a combat hunter course, which isn’t what it sounds like. It’s actually about observing things better. And I remember an instructor very clearly saying, “When you’re in this environment, believe nothing of what you hear and only half of what you say.” And I think this needs to apply to this situation.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. The problem with it is it’s just a very serious allegation that you betrayed your boss and friend Pete Hegseth, who you’ve worked with for, like, over a decade, who you supported from the very beginning. I think that’s all. I don’t want to speak for you, but you’re being accused of betraying Hegseth, who’s under attack from people who want a war with Iran. Let’s just be totally blunt about it. And so you’re being accused of betraying him, betraying the president and committing a crime. That’s a crime. So this is not just like, “Hey, Dan Caldwell’s got bad taste in neckties.” This is like, “Dan Caldwell’s a criminal.”

The Other Officials Who Were Fired

DAN CALDWELL: Yeah. It’s just, you know, sometimes I think it just hasn’t fully set in with me and what’s going on. And I want to talk about the two other gentlemen that are going through this with me. What’s going on with them in some ways is more infuriating because, as you said, I have a public profile. I took some positions that shouldn’t be controversial, but are. And I was out there advancing things that a lot of people in the foreign policy establishment didn’t want. Doesn’t justify what’s happening to me. But that, like, let’s just be honest, that is the nature of the games played in D.C.

Darin Selnick and Colin Carroll are patriots. Let me talk about Darin a little bit. Darin’s another person that worked with Secretary Hegseth for over a decade. He is somebody who spent decades working around veterans and military health issues. He served in the first Bush administration at the VA. He served a critical role in the first Trump administration. He was a key player in advancing the VA Mission Act, one of the greatest accomplishments of the first Trump administration, which fundamentally reformed how the VA delivers health care.

Darin, I think, can go to bed every night saying he saved thousands of veterans lives because of the reforms he helped advance. He’s an Air Force veteran. In between his stints in government, he worked at Concerned Veterans for America with me and Pete, helping develop revolutionary reforms to the VA that in large part were implemented by the first Trump administration.

To come back, he picked up, left his nice life in Oceanside, California. His wife stayed behind and he got a crummy apartment in Arlington, Virginia and worked sometimes 16, 17 hour days to advance the secretary’s agenda. He played a key role in ripping out woke and DEI nonsense from the administration. Darin was a key driver of that.

TUCKER CARLSON: By your description of Darin Selnick, he doesn’t sound like he is engaged in the policy fights or he’s like some crazed ideologue.

DAN CALDWELL: So before I talk about Colin – I don’t actually know what Darin Selnick and Colin Carroll think about Iran. Darin could be a secret twelver Shia for all I know. Colin Carroll could want to nuke Iran until the sand glows. Darin was a deputy chief of staff focused on back-end office operations and personnel and military health policy.

Colin Carroll, let me talk about Colin because he’s an incredible individual too. Colin’s a Naval Academy graduate. He served as a recon Marine in combat. Then he literally became a rocket scientist working in tech, working in companies like Anduril. And he was Steve Feinberg’s chief of staff. Colin’s focus was on science, R&E and budget. He was down and in. And these gentlemen were patriots and they did not deserve – none of us deserve to get treated this way. But in some ways what’s going on with them angers me more.

The Pentagon’s Complex Environment

TUCKER CARLSON: And it’s not even clear, I should say at the outset that Pentagon DoD is the largest human organization in the world, has more people than any, I think in the history of the world. And there’s a lot at stake. The future of the world’s at stake. It’s DoD. They have nuclear weapons. And so the pressure exerted on that agency from outside but also the fighting within it make it like one of the most complicated and treacherous work environments ever created. Is that fair?

DAN CALDWELL: That is fair. And I will say the one thing we had in common, there’s a couple things we have in common – we were threatening a lot of established interests in our own separate ways and we had people who had personal vendettas against us.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

DAN CALDWELL: And I think they weaponized the investigation against us. I think that’s part of what’s going on here. But look, Colin, and let me just say Steve Feinberg, I didn’t know him before this, I have a lot of respect for him.

TUCKER CARLSON: I do too.

DAN CALDWELL: I think he’s going to be a fantastic Deputy Secretary. Steve Feinberg and Colin were going to shake up how acquisitions are done, how the budgeting is done, how we do science and research. And Colin’s got one speed and that’s go. And he wasn’t afraid to challenge people when they’re acting stupid and wanted to keep doing the same thing. Darin’s the same way. Darin upset a lot of the people that want to keep using the military to be a giant social science experiment.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right.

DAN CALDWELL: So we, and of course I have some views about the role of America in the world, you know, as we’ve discussed, are a little controversial. All of us in our own ways threatened really established interests.

TUCKER CARLSON: Your views are only controversial in Washington D.C. correct? Let me tell you that. Correct? As a matter of fact, correct. They are not controversial anywhere else in this country or the world.

The Pentagon’s Internal Conflicts

DAN CALDWELL: We threatened a lot of established interests inside the building and outside the building.

TUCKER CARLSON: So I just want to restate because this is the core, this is why you’re here. Because you got bounced out and you’re being accused of betraying your boss, your president, your nation. You have, I don’t want to speak for you, not leaked classified information to the news media. You’ve never undergone a polygraph exam and you’ve never handed over your personal phone. Are all those statements true?

DAN CALDWELL: That is all 100% correct. And let me just say, actually my first instinct when they came and escorted me out of my office was I actually thought that they were going to try and get me to testify against the secretary because the secretary over the whole signal gate stuff is under an inspector general investigation. That was my first instinct, was this was part of it.

TUCKER CARLSON: So there was an investigation into leaking. I think the president, like all presidents doesn’t want leaking. I mean, nobody wants leaking, right? If you’re in charge, you don’t want your employees to be leaking against you. So there was this leak investigation that was ongoing for weeks. Right. What were you, was your access to classified information limited during that time?

DAN CALDWELL: Not at all. In fact, the day I was escorted out of the building, I went into, I won’t get specific, the highest of high level intelligence briefings and up until the minute I was pulled out of my office, I was on highly classified systems doing my work.

TUCKER CARLSON: So you were looking at highly classified information up until the moment they brought you outside and separated on the basis of the claim that you were leaking classified information?

DAN CALDWELL: I was doing my job. Part of my job entailed looking at intelligence, helping make recommendations to Secretary, giving my thoughts, working with the policy team. And most of our work was done on classified systems.

TUCKER CARLSON: The reason I’m pressing you on this is that doesn’t make any sense.

DAN CALDWELL: Doesn’t make any sense to me.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right. So if you’re. Because just to be clear, you don’t want people leaking classified information from the Pentagon.

DAN CALDWELL: Let me be clear, that is a problem at the Department of Defense. There has been things that have been shared with the media, particularly I would say this, the Panama stuff. That is unacceptable.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’ve been the recipient of classified information for decades, including from the Pentagon in the form of leaks. And every journalist who’s doing his job has been so like there’s a lot of leaking of classified information, I can tell you.

The Real Source of Pentagon Leaks

DAN CALDWELL: But let’s be honest, everyone knows where that’s coming from. It’s from the career staff who don’t like what the president and the secretary and vice president want to do. There’s people on the joint staff that I come to respect, but a lot of them are incredibly hostile to the secretary, to the president and the vice president’s worldview. It’s pretty obvious that that’s where most of the leaks are coming from. There’s a less obvious place. I just want to point something out as we sit here today, Tucker, and this could change by the time this is aired. But as we sit here today, Susan Rice, Michelle Flournoy, Eric Edelman are still in good standing with the Department of Defense.

TUCKER CARLSON: What?

DAN CALDWELL: That is correct.

TUCKER CARLSON: They are still Susan Rice. Susan Rice, Obama, Susan Rice.

DAN CALDWELL: Yes. Susan Rice is still on the Defense Policy Board right now as we speak sit here today. By the time this is released, that might change. But as we sit here today, she is still on the Defense Policy Board. Now, that doesn’t mean she can go in the building and get access, whatever she wants, but it means that she works with DoD employees, she can interact with them and has the credential and the affiliation with the Department of Defense.

TUCKER CARLSON: But Susan Rice has no relevant experience for a job like that at all. She’s a political hack.

DAN CALDWELL: Correct. Yet as we sit here in April of 2025, about 100 days into the president’s first term, she and a bunch of other people who are incredibly hostile to the president and his worldview remain on the Defense policy.

TUCKER CARLSON: You’re sure?

DAN CALDWELL: You can go on the website and check it right now. And I checked with Colin and Darin and they confirmed that as well, too.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, that’s shocking.

DAN CALDWELL: And again, I would just say if you want to look where leaks are maybe coming from, that would be a place to start.

The Investigation’s Inconsistencies

TUCKER CARLSON: So. But just back to your story and I won’t linger on it. Every time I mention this, your jaw tightens. I can feel your frustration and I.

DAN CALDWELL: Should just say frustrated you.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I’m completely convinced that this is nonsense and sinister nonsense. But if you’re the subject of an investigation, a leak investigation, if the investigators had determined that you were leaking classified information to the news media, you probably wouldn’t have continued to receive access to classified information, correct?

DAN CALDWELL: Correct. And I probably wouldn’t be sitting here today.

TUCKER CARLSON: You’d be in jail, dude. You would have been handcuffed. Correct.

DAN CALDWELL: If I had leaked. Well, again, I just want to be clear here. I still don’t know if the term they used is. And that you see the DoD using is unauthorized release of information. If I think there’s a lot of rumors and people are exploiting this that we can talk about. If I actually did some of the things that anonymous people on the Internet and in the Pentagon are saying I did, I’d be in handcuffs.

TUCKER CARLSON: And you’re not.

DAN CALDWELL: I’m not. I’d be like Reality Winner or Bradley Manning or Edward Snowden or one of those people.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s very obvious to me, having far fewer details than you have, that you’re one of the people who is perceived to be standing in the way of a regime change war in Iran and that that was kind of your crime. That seems obvious to me.

DAN CALDWELL: I think it’s complicated. There’s other layers to this. But based on what has been happening since then, I think that is a factor, is that I think, and it is being weaponized against me is I think that they want to also go after. And I think that had. I can’t say this with certainty, but just speculating that had somebody in the White House not said, okay, we need to put a stop to this, there probably have been more people treated the same way that Colin, Darin Selnick and myself were treated.

TUCKER CARLSON: So the fastest way to knock someone out of commission and eliminate his influence, and in your case, his job is to tell the person that he works for that that person’s betraying you. That person’s betraying you. And so, I mean, it sounds to me, again, I keep putting words in your mouth, but it sounds to me like you have felt. It sounds like you still feel that your views are aligned with those of the president, 100%.

DAN CALDWELL: I wouldn’t have joined this administration if I didn’t feel that way. Again, I don’t speak for the president, but here’s the other thing, too. I had this attitude in the Pentagon and maybe this was you know, I saw this attitude that I was still, you know, in the Marine Corps, like, hey, when a decision is made, when we’ve decided on a course of action that we’re going to do this, we’re going to make sure it’s executed properly.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

DAN CALDWELL: And you still raise concerns. You still. If you see something happening, then you can do that. But if you are so repulsed by what’s happening, then you should resign.

TUCKER CARLSON: So I think what you’re saying is that you, you were serving your boss, bosses, even when you personally disagreed.

DAN CALDWELL: Correct.

TUCKER CARLSON: As you did in the US Marine Corps.

DAN CALDWELL: Correct.

TUCKER CARLSON: Okay. How does. I don’t even want to ask you, but I’m going to. How does this make you. I mean, you must feel like you’re living in a dream, a nightmare.

Personal Impact and Pentagon Leadership

DAN CALDWELL: I said earlier, sometimes I feel like it hasn’t fully set in because it does feel like a dream. It’s like, when am I going to wake up at 0430 and just get ready for work and walk my dog, drop her off at doggy daycare, and then roll into the river entrance back in the Pentagon. I feel like on some level that’s happening and I feel like it hasn’t fully hit me, but it’s been awful. I mean, the impact on my family. You know, I’ll just say I wanted to try and hide this from my mom as long as possible because I was worried. She’s a worrier. I love her to death. She’s a saint. I didn’t want to tell her. Then an hour later, somebody leaked to Reuters describing exactly what had happened to me. And then six hours later, they pulled the same stunt with Darin. And then 12 hours later, they pulled the same stunt with Colin.

And so, you know, it’s been devastating and it’s caused a lot of stress to my family. Just one thing I want to say is I’ve been a friend and supporter of Pete Hegseth for a long time, and I’m just personally devastated by this. It’s just awful and whatnot. But at the end of the day, putting all this aside, Pete Hegseth needs to be a successful Secretary of Defense. And the entire Department of Defense cannot be continue to be consumed by chaos. They have a great team there. They have a great deputy secretary. We just talked about Steve Feinberg. They have a, I think one of the leading lights of the America first foreign policy movement in Bridge, Colby, a dear friend of mine running the policy shop, now effectively the Pentagon’s number three.

He has a lot of great mid level and junior Staffers under him, you’re going to have some great undersecretaries coming in. These are just world class people. These are not political hacks. You know, people like Mike Duffy at A and S, people like Emil Michaels and ANS Acquisition and Sustainment at Research and Engineering Service. Secretaries, I think are going to be great. Dan Driscoll, even though he has a secondary job running an agency that shouldn’t exist, ATF, I think he’s proven to be a great army secretary.

And look, one of my favorite things, Tucker, is admitting you’re wrong about people. One person I was wrong about was John Phelan. I was skeptical of him being Navy Secretary. And so far, I have to say, him and his team are off to a great start. I think Troy Mink is going to be a fantastic Air Force secretary. And so there’s this fantastic team underneath the secretary that can enable him to be incredibly successful. He has to move past this. He has to get a solid team around him in the front office. And this isn’t a plea to hire me back. I, I candidly just want to move on and go back to the, doing what I was doing before and being an advocate on the outside. But, but, you know, without Darin and I and others, he, he, he needs to get a strong team in there. And there’s some great people that I think could, could do that.

TUCKER CARLSON: And this Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

DAN CALDWELL: Oh, I have to say this is interesting. You bring him up. Chairman Dan Razin Caine. Incredibly impressive. And I actually think, if I’m being honest, one thing that has incited the building against President Trump and the secretary was the selection of him. They want, a lot of people wanted the secretary and the president to go the normal route, including some people in the administration, and pick a combatant commander, you know, a General Kurilla or an Admiral Paparo. I actually like Admiral Paparazzi.

But they wanted him to go that route. No, instead they did something that needed to happen is they pulled a very accomplished guy out of retirement. Somebody who didn’t do all the right things and check all the right boxes in his career, but who’s incredibly smart, who’s incredibly thoughtful about how he approaches problems, to be the chairman. And that upset so many career paths.

Like if you look at these books where they kind of lay out, like how you promote generals is they have like little maps about where people are going to go and there’s a lot of people that are going to go to this, this role and the, you know, Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff the vice chairman. They’re going to be the chief of staff of the Army. And by elevating Kang, they upset so many career paths. And it’s hard to overstate how much of a middle finger that was to a lot of the uniform leadership of the United States military. And I think that was one of the reasons why we started to see more leaks, really starting around the middle of March.

TUCKER CARLSON: And they weren’t coming from you?

DAN CALDWELL: No, absolutely not. And again, it’s obvious to anybody who’s worked in the Pentagon where these were coming from.

TUCKER CARLSON: I really appreciate your spending all this time, Tucker.

Closing Thoughts

DAN CALDWELL: It’s been an honor to be here. And I just want to say I think you should feel proud because you have played a key role in helping stop some really bad stuff in foreign policy. Your platform has really helped turn the tide, I think, in a lot of different ways. And I think you deserve a lot of credit for that.

TUCKER CARLSON: I just want to be useful, but I appreciate it. Dan Caldwell, thank you very much and Godspeed.

DAN CALDWELL: Thank you.

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